On March 6, the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support held a hearing on changes to programs assisting low-income families. The hearing focused on the impact several legislative changes enacted in the Deficit Reduction Act (DRA) of 2005 (P.L. 109-171) have had on states’ abilities to administer programs such as the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and child support enforcement.
In his opening remarks, Chair Jim McDermott (D-WA) said, “As I listen to the testimony from those responsible for administering these programs, my bottom line question will be this are the recent changes helping, hurting or irrelevant to the goal of lifting families out of poverty?” Rep. McDermott used charts to illustrate the decline in the number of poor children receiving TANF benefits; the barriers that exist between TANF recipients and self-sufficiency; a decline in the number of children receiving child care assistance; and the cost-effectiveness of the child support enforcement system. “In my view, encouraging future caseload declines without regard to employment and poverty is a mistake. Caseload reduction during a time of rising poverty is not a success story,” Chair McDermott said.
“In short, the Deficit Reduction Act extended and rebooted the 1996 [welfare] reforms,” Ranking Member Jerry Weller (R-IL) stated in his opening remarks. Rep. Weller continued, “State targets to limit welfare dependence and engage 50 percent of current adults on welfare in work and other productive activities were renewed. Already, these revisions are having effects…Welfare dependence is once again dropping significantly, with the decline last year surpassing any year since 2001. That will free even more resources for child care and other work supports, just like occurred after the 1996 reforms. He added that “child support changes are encouraging states to reengineer programs to better serve their customers.”
The first panel consisted of one witness: Sidonie Squier, director of the Office of Family Assistance at the Department of Health and Human Services. Ms. Squier testified that while the DRA “retained the existing structure and many fundamental aspects of the original TANF law, [it] did make important statutory changes to promote work and accountability by requiring states to engage more TANF families in productive work activities leading to self-sufficiency.” She indicated that the law “changed the base year of the caseload calculation reduction credit from FY1995 to FY2005, [effectively] increasing the work participation requirements; included in the work participation rates families in separate state programs, which were previously excluded from the rates; eliminated provisions for the High Performance Bonus and Illegitimacy Reduction Bonus and replaced them with a $150 million-a-year research, demonstration, and technical assistance fund; expanded a state’s ability to meet its maintenance-of-effort requirement; and increased federal child care funding by $200 million per year, $1 billion over five years.”
Ms. Squier added, “We understand and acknowledge that helping states increase the number of welfare recipients participating in work activities will be a challenge. Some question whether it can be done. We believe that this challenge is not only feasible, but must be met if we are to continue our progress in reforming welfare and moving families to self-sufficiency…virtually all states have the flexibility they will need to meet the new work participation requirements. We hope that they do this by helping needy families find appropriate work activities and increasing support to them.”
Robin Arnold-Williams, secretary of the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services, began the testimony from the second panel. Dr. Arnold-Williams discussed how the changes enacted in the DRA directly affect the WorkFirst program established in Washington State in 1997. “With the passage of the DRA in 2005, states were disappointed that transition to measuring and rewarding states based on employment outcomes was not included. We remained hopeful, however, that implementing regulations would at least not take us backwards. We were again disappointed.” Dr. Arnold-Williams outlined several areas in which she felt the DRA negatively affected state programs and added, “Specific DRA regulations related to TANF and child support are having a direct impact on how Washington State operates its WorkFirst program and our ability to support low-income families. In the past year, policy and service discussions have turned to ‘take-out’ and ‘keep-in’ strategies to achieve the best participation rate and avoid penalties, not to best serve families. Scarce federal and state resources are being diverted into new services to ‘fill’ hours and meet new restrictive definitions rather than to further an individualized approach to self-sufficiency.”
David Hansell, acting commissioner of the New York State Department of Temporary Disability Assistance, spoke at length about the effects of the DRA on child support enforcement; “We collected a record $1.558 billion in 2006. Over 92 percent of these collections were distributed directly to children and families, making a critical contribution to economic self-sufficiency for many…However, we fear that our continued ability to help individuals move from temporary assistance to long-term work engagement may be undermined by some of the requirements contained within in the DRA and the regulatory interpretations of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.” Mr. Hansell expressed concern that while some changes would help New York improve its child support enforcement program, the elimination of the federal match of earned incentives would cost the state at least $17 million annually in lost performance bonuses. “Sixty percent (or approximately $10 million) of this lost federal support will be borne by our county-run child support offices.”
“Nevada estimates that more than one-third of our adult work-eligible TANF clients have significant barriers to employment,” testified Nancy Ford, administrator of the Division of Welfare and Supportive Services in Carson City, Nevada. Ms. Ford continued that “these include individuals [with] pending Social Security Disability adjudications; with disabilities as defined under the Americans with Disabilities Act; with mental health issues; under a physician’s care with temporary work limitations/waivers that meet the definitions under the Family and Medical Leave Act [P.L. 103-3]; in domestic violence situations; with unresolved substance abuse issues; and in their last trimester of pregnancy.” Ms. Ford stated that the changes to the DRA have “effectively eliminated our ability to use state maintenance-of-effort dollars to manage our difficult-to-serve TANF population by defining parents in these programs as ‘work eligible’ and including them in the [work] participation rate. This will have a major impact on our work participation rates and our ability to achieve long lasting self-sufficiency through the provision of tools and support these families require.”
Mary Dean Harvey, director of the Georgia Department of Human Resources Division of Family and Children, testified in support of the changes enacted by the DRA. “[O]ur efforts under TANF should…be focused on guaranteeing [the] fundamental right that was once called ‘Freedom from Want;’ not by merely providing a check and thereby camouflaging the program, but by putting parents to work to end it entirely. In that sense, we’ve found the federal goals for work participation to be not only reasonable, but in our estimation, modest.” Ms. Harvey outlined Georgia’s three-pronged approach, implemented “without a significant increase in staff or budget, without new legislation, and with few changes to policy,” and discussed the role of increased child support enforcement. “A large part of reducing dependence and poverty in all states has been increased child support enforcement. And, indeed, a key part of our TANF strategy is to make sure that both parents are supporting their children. Quite often, that monthly support makes the difference between whether a mother and children are dependent on welfare or fully independent.”
Testifying on behalf of the National Association of Counties and the County Welfare Directors Association of California, Bruce Wagstaff, director of the Sacramento County Department of Human Assistance, expressed concerns with TANF’s shift in focus since the enactment of the DRA. “We are disappointed to see [the changes] heavily focused on process rather than outcomes something we thought we had moved away from with the 1996 TANF statute. The regulations include narrow definitions of work activities, add parents who have reached their statutory time limits on aid into states’ work participation rate calculations, and implement process-heavy requirements for verifying and documenting participation.” Mr. Wagstaff added, “I would like to make it very clear that counties are not afraid of participation. In California, we began the work to increase participation before TANF was reauthorized, not just because we felt pressure from the federal government, but because it was the right thing to do for families and children.”
